7 ms·

Ask HN: Resources to Learn Functional Programming?

50 points by p33p 9y ago

fsloth 9y ago
'F# for scientists' by Jon Harrop is excellen. It's a bit pricey, but provided tremendous value on the how and why of functional paradigms within the scope of practical, brief programs. 'Expert F#' by Don Syme et all is a fantastic reference. Real World Functional programming by Tomas Petricek is very good as well. 'Programming language concepts' by Peter Sestoft is fantastic as well, as programming languages are perhaps the most obvious domain where functional approach shine, and the concepts are needed everywhere even though one was not implementing an interpreter.
- auxym 9y ago
  I was about to post pretty much this list, perhaps also with Scott Wlaschin's stuff. His blog F# For Fun and Profit: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ And his talk on functional "design patterns": https://vimeo.com/113588389 https://vimeo.com/113588389
elorm 9y ago
I’m assuming you already have experience with one imperative language. Graham Hutton’s programming in Haskell is a really great book and will get you up and moving in no time. If you’re new to programming, id suggest Haskell Programming from first principles by Chris Allen And Julie Moronuki. It’s a very large book(1000+ Pages) but teaches you functional programming concepts from scratch in Haskell without assuming any previous exposure to the language
johnsonjo 9y ago
Here’s some I’ve used. Mostly just beginner stuff though. Professor Frisby’s mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming by Brian Lunsdorf is great[1]. A pretty solid book meant for beginners that introduces functional programming in a simple manner without over burdening you with all the math. It uses JavaScript, and helps you create a lot of the functional programming patterns yourself. Learn You a Haskell For Great Good [2]. This book is pretty light hearted and an entertaining read. It’s for beginners. I’ve heard a good follow up to this one is Real World Haskell, but I’ve also heard the code for it is outdated, but I’m not certain whether it is (I’ve never read it.) There is a course on egghead.io that is free by Brian Lonsdorf the author of the Mostly Adequate guide [3]. I hesitate recommending this one as it’s got a pretty different approach and uses stop motion that can take some getting used to and the voices can be somewhat annoying, but overall great content wise and covers many of the things in the Mostly Adequate guide. He also does a course on Frontend Masters which is just him giving a workshop in person so no stop motion or weird voices. Lastly I haven’t actually read this one even though I believe I purchased it when I first saw it announced by the author and it is, Functional Light JavaScript by Kyle Simpson [4]. Great author that always takes a r ally great approach to explaining things he wrote the You Don’t Know JS series that he released through O’Reilly and also put up on github. Kyle Simpson also has a course on Frontend Masters modeled after his book Functional Light JavaScript. [1]: https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide/blob... [2]: http://www.learnyouahaskell.com http://www.learnyouahaskell.com [3]: https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-composable-functional-javascript https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-compo... [4]: https://leanpub.com/fljs https://leanpub.com/fljs
- johnsonjo 9y ago
  By the way most of these resources the authors provide for free but you can also generously pay them for their work.
- jwdunne 9y ago
  I've been reading the Mostly Adequate guide. It's helped me. The explanations for functors and what not really helped things click after going through other articles.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sizeofchar 9y ago
Resources that truly taught me functional programming were Erik Meijer’s course on edX and it’s companion book, Programming in Haskell by Graham Hutton, and then Learn you a Haskell web book.
i_feel_great 9y ago
Assuming you are starting from scratch - start with the Lua programming language. It is very easy. Practise writing everything as a function, practise composing everything from standalone, unit functions, practise writing recursive functions that use proper tail calls, practise writing co-routines. From there is will be a lot easier to pick up languages like OCaml, F# and Erlang - it will all be syntax, libraries and type systems.
davidgl 9y ago
Brilliant introduction to static FP, uses F# but applicable to Elm, Occaml, Purescript, Haskell, etc. https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/
mercer 9y ago
Considering both the language and the ecosystem/community, I'd recommend Elixir. Both the language and the community bear resemble my experience with Ruby. Like Ruby, the language is relatively beginner-friendly, and the community is very welcoming and helpful. The language is probably my favorite so far. For me it hits the pragmatic sweet spot between enforcing functional programming without being needlessly strict/pedantic about it, or overwhelming me with FP concepts. That can be considered a downside too, of course, but in my case it really helped me ease into functional programming in a way that other languages did not (Haskell was a bit too much, and Clojure felt too alien, for example). The friendly community matters a lot when you're in the 'stupid questions' phase. More than once my undoubtedly very silly questions were answered promptly, often even by the creator of the language. My experience with quite a few other 'functional' communities is that there's an unfortunate tendency toward condescension, or a kind of academic elitism that made me avoid asking what I thought might be stupid questions. Furthermore, people actively try to teach functional principles, and in particular the Phoenix web framework is great even just to see how things are done (I often add it to my projects just for reference). Dave Thomas, who is an excellent and prolific teacher/language enthusiast, has more than once expressed his affection for Elixir as a language to teach functional programming. Another advantage is tooling. One of the explicit goals set by the creator (Jose Valim) was to make the language 'friendly'. So very often error messages give hints on how to do things instead, and there's an automatic formatter that 'fixes' stuff for you (proper indentation, idiomatic code style, etc.). The documentation for the language, packages and functions are probably my favorite ever, and it comes with other goodies like a testing framework, interactive code shell (REPL), a really nice package manager and probably some other stuff I forgot. And finally, even though it's by no means a very popular language (yet), it's well on its way to being a 'mainstream' functional language, and it's something you can actually use for a lot of stuff (backend development, scripting, or to start a telephony company ;). Btw, if anyone else is already playing around with Elixir, I can highly recommend searching for Dave Thomas' articles and videos. They're an excellent way to learn FP as well 'why' FP is interesting/important/worthwhile.
znt 9y ago
You can just visit http://www.4clojure.com/ http://www.4clojure.com/ and start practising Clojure. No need to install anything.
brudgers 9y ago
How to Design Programs for a longer, beginner oriented text. The Racket tutorials for a shorter and multi-level introduction. Several Edx programming courses from University of British Columbia use Racket and are built around the HtDP methodology. The Racket ecosystem, like any engineering artifact makes tradeoffs. In the case of Racket, some of the tradeoffs are driven by a goal of teaching functional programming in addition to allowing/encouraging/requiring functional programming. Circling back to HtDP, though organized as an introductory text, a more experienced programmer might benefit from working through it as a way of developing a discipline for functional programming. That is, when HtDP is the only exposure to programming a beginner has, programming == functional programming. On the other hand, an experienced programmer has programming habits which must be set aside when learning functional programming and that may be a harder task.
- DavidGabriel 9y ago
  HtDP vs SICP who will winner in your opinion ?
  - brudgers 9y ago
    The person who reads both. My recent comments that came out overly harsh in terms of the initial criticism of HtDP's aesthetics, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563160
otikik 9y ago
I've recently used Lambdacast - http://lambdacast.com http://lambdacast.com and I recommend it. It's a podcast which focuses on teaching FP "to the working programmer". One of the authors was a novice when the podcast started, and he asks questions "keeping the discussion grounded" (most of the time). It's not centered on one particular language or framework. I've been listening to them while doing menial tasks like cleaning up my kitchen and I can understand some concepts now that I could not before.
icc97 9y ago
I found the funfunfunction videos on functional programming [0] very useful [0]: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0zVEGEvSaeEd9hlmCXrk5yUyqUag-n84 https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0zVEGEvSaeEd9hlmCXrk5y...
lambda00000010 9y ago
"learn you a haskell for great good" is a good light introduction to haskell and functional programming
PaulStatezny 9y ago
This isn’t the type of answer you were asking for, but... Apprenticeship is invaluable. If you can, find an adept functional programmer to learn from. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a place using Elm and Elixir, and I had the opportunity to learn from another developer with a lot of passion for FP. It was incredibly helpful for learning. Good luck! FP is a great tool for your tool belt and teaches a lot about good code design.
jiyinyiyong 9y ago
Learn Haskell and use Clojure/Elixir/Scala/ReasonML/Elm...

50 points by p33p 9y ago

'F# for scientists' by Jon Harrop is excellen. It's a bit pricey, but provided tremendous value on the how and why of functional paradigms within the scope of practical, brief programs. 'Expert F#' by Don Syme et all is a fantastic reference. Real World Functional programming by Tomas Petricek is very good as well. 'Programming language concepts' by Peter Sestoft is fantastic as well, as programming languages are perhaps the most obvious domain where functional approach shine, and the concepts are needed everywhere even though one was not implementing an interpreter.

auxym 9y ago
I was about to post pretty much this list, perhaps also with Scott Wlaschin's stuff. His blog F# For Fun and Profit: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ And his talk on functional "design patterns": https://vimeo.com/113588389 https://vimeo.com/113588389

elorm 9y ago

I’m assuming you already have experience with one imperative language. Graham Hutton’s programming in Haskell is a really great book and will get you up and moving in no time. If you’re new to programming, id suggest Haskell Programming from first principles by Chris Allen And Julie Moronuki. It’s a very large book(1000+ Pages) but teaches you functional programming concepts from scratch in Haskell without assuming any previous exposure to the language

johnsonjo 9y ago

Here’s some I’ve used. Mostly just beginner stuff though. Professor Frisby’s mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming by Brian Lunsdorf is great[1]. A pretty solid book meant for beginners that introduces functional programming in a simple manner without over burdening you with all the math. It uses JavaScript, and helps you create a lot of the functional programming patterns yourself. Learn You a Haskell For Great Good [2]. This book is pretty light hearted and an entertaining read. It’s for beginners. I’ve heard a good follow up to this one is Real World Haskell, but I’ve also heard the code for it is outdated, but I’m not certain whether it is (I’ve never read it.) There is a course on egghead.io that is free by Brian Lonsdorf the author of the Mostly Adequate guide [3]. I hesitate recommending this one as it’s got a pretty different approach and uses stop motion that can take some getting used to and the voices can be somewhat annoying, but overall great content wise and covers many of the things in the Mostly Adequate guide. He also does a course on Frontend Masters which is just him giving a workshop in person so no stop motion or weird voices. Lastly I haven’t actually read this one even though I believe I purchased it when I first saw it announced by the author and it is, Functional Light JavaScript by Kyle Simpson [4]. Great author that always takes a r ally great approach to explaining things he wrote the You Don’t Know JS series that he released through O’Reilly and also put up on github. Kyle Simpson also has a course on Frontend Masters modeled after his book Functional Light JavaScript. [1]: https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide/blob... [2]: http://www.learnyouahaskell.com http://www.learnyouahaskell.com [3]: https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-composable-functional-javascript https://egghead.io/courses/professor-frisby-introduces-compo... [4]: https://leanpub.com/fljs https://leanpub.com/fljs

johnsonjo 9y ago
By the way most of these resources the authors provide for free but you can also generously pay them for their work.
jwdunne 9y ago
I've been reading the Mostly Adequate guide. It's helped me. The explanations for functors and what not really helped things click after going through other articles.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sizeofchar 9y ago

Resources that truly taught me functional programming were Erik Meijer’s course on edX and it’s companion book, Programming in Haskell by Graham Hutton, and then Learn you a Haskell web book.

i_feel_great 9y ago

Assuming you are starting from scratch - start with the Lua programming language. It is very easy. Practise writing everything as a function, practise composing everything from standalone, unit functions, practise writing recursive functions that use proper tail calls, practise writing co-routines. From there is will be a lot easier to pick up languages like OCaml, F# and Erlang - it will all be syntax, libraries and type systems.

davidgl 9y ago

Brilliant introduction to static FP, uses F# but applicable to Elm, Occaml, Purescript, Haskell, etc. https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/

mercer 9y ago

Considering both the language and the ecosystem/community, I'd recommend Elixir. Both the language and the community bear resemble my experience with Ruby. Like Ruby, the language is relatively beginner-friendly, and the community is very welcoming and helpful. The language is probably my favorite so far. For me it hits the pragmatic sweet spot between enforcing functional programming without being needlessly strict/pedantic about it, or overwhelming me with FP concepts. That can be considered a downside too, of course, but in my case it really helped me ease into functional programming in a way that other languages did not (Haskell was a bit too much, and Clojure felt too alien, for example). The friendly community matters a lot when you're in the 'stupid questions' phase. More than once my undoubtedly very silly questions were answered promptly, often even by the creator of the language. My experience with quite a few other 'functional' communities is that there's an unfortunate tendency toward condescension, or a kind of academic elitism that made me avoid asking what I thought might be stupid questions. Furthermore, people actively try to teach functional principles, and in particular the Phoenix web framework is great even just to see how things are done (I often add it to my projects just for reference). Dave Thomas, who is an excellent and prolific teacher/language enthusiast, has more than once expressed his affection for Elixir as a language to teach functional programming. Another advantage is tooling. One of the explicit goals set by the creator (Jose Valim) was to make the language 'friendly'. So very often error messages give hints on how to do things instead, and there's an automatic formatter that 'fixes' stuff for you (proper indentation, idiomatic code style, etc.). The documentation for the language, packages and functions are probably my favorite ever, and it comes with other goodies like a testing framework, interactive code shell (REPL), a really nice package manager and probably some other stuff I forgot. And finally, even though it's by no means a very popular language (yet), it's well on its way to being a 'mainstream' functional language, and it's something you can actually use for a lot of stuff (backend development, scripting, or to start a telephony company ;). Btw, if anyone else is already playing around with Elixir, I can highly recommend searching for Dave Thomas' articles and videos. They're an excellent way to learn FP as well 'why' FP is interesting/important/worthwhile.

znt 9y ago

You can just visit http://www.4clojure.com/ http://www.4clojure.com/ and start practising Clojure. No need to install anything.

brudgers 9y ago

How to Design Programs for a longer, beginner oriented text. The Racket tutorials for a shorter and multi-level introduction. Several Edx programming courses from University of British Columbia use Racket and are built around the HtDP methodology. The Racket ecosystem, like any engineering artifact makes tradeoffs. In the case of Racket, some of the tradeoffs are driven by a goal of teaching functional programming in addition to allowing/encouraging/requiring functional programming. Circling back to HtDP, though organized as an introductory text, a more experienced programmer might benefit from working through it as a way of developing a discipline for functional programming. That is, when HtDP is the only exposure to programming a beginner has, programming == functional programming. On the other hand, an experienced programmer has programming habits which must be set aside when learning functional programming and that may be a harder task.

DavidGabriel 9y ago
HtDP vs SICP who will winner in your opinion ?
- brudgers 9y ago
  The person who reads both. My recent comments that came out overly harsh in terms of the initial criticism of HtDP's aesthetics, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16563160

otikik 9y ago

I've recently used Lambdacast - http://lambdacast.com http://lambdacast.com and I recommend it. It's a podcast which focuses on teaching FP "to the working programmer". One of the authors was a novice when the podcast started, and he asks questions "keeping the discussion grounded" (most of the time). It's not centered on one particular language or framework. I've been listening to them while doing menial tasks like cleaning up my kitchen and I can understand some concepts now that I could not before.

icc97 9y ago

I found the funfunfunction videos on functional programming [0] very useful [0]: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0zVEGEvSaeEd9hlmCXrk5yUyqUag-n84 https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0zVEGEvSaeEd9hlmCXrk5y...

lambda00000010 9y ago

"learn you a haskell for great good" is a good light introduction to haskell and functional programming

PaulStatezny 9y ago

This isn’t the type of answer you were asking for, but... Apprenticeship is invaluable. If you can, find an adept functional programmer to learn from. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a place using Elm and Elixir, and I had the opportunity to learn from another developer with a lot of passion for FP. It was incredibly helpful for learning. Good luck! FP is a great tool for your tool belt and teaches a lot about good code design.

jiyinyiyong 9y ago

Learn Haskell and use Clojure/Elixir/Scala/ReasonML/Elm...